


Charcoals

by TheVineSpeaketh



Series: The Arts of Domesticity [4]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, BAMF Q, Happy Ending, M/M, Madeleine Swann & James Bond Friendship, Protective James Bond, Protective Q, Resolved Sexual Tension, Spoilers, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 13:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5207711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVineSpeaketh/pseuds/TheVineSpeaketh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Slowly, he tore himself apart, heart and soul, convincing himself this was happiness. And Q was none the wiser."</p><p>Despite what Alec had said, James is still convinced that Q should avoid him at all costs. And then he gets a lead in an unsanctioned case that takes him all the way to Mexico City...</p><p>Heavily reliant on SPECTRE's plot. Thus, there are many spoilers ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charcoals

**Author's Note:**

> This contains immense amounts of spoilers for SPECTRE. If you have not seen it, I recommend you see it. It's very good~

Life continued on as usual. Q continued running off to work in the evenings, though over time he had made it clear it was quickly becoming a labor of love. James watched him and interacted with him like a man headed for the gallows. Every little thing he did was tinged with a minute pain that he slowly smothered, until he was sure that his misery was not contagious or noticeable. He convinced himself everything he said—and everything Alec said—was brought on by good scotch and nothing more.

To allow himself to hope would be putting Q’s life in danger, and he’d already done a good job of that already. Best not press it, he thought to himself, and he pushed himself further and further into the hellish realm of his work life. In between missions officially sanctioned by MI6 and his not so savory activities beyond that, he kept himself busy, doing missions to the best of his ability and following leads and doing research in his off time. It acted as a coolant to the _something_ simmering in his heart that he no longer chose to identify, and it drove him further from his own humanity. Slowly, he tore himself apart, heart and soul, convincing himself this was happiness. And Q was none the wiser.

Leaning in the doorway of his bedroom, James watched him one evening as he was about to leave, Q’s nimble fingers adjusting his tie as he finished up a tea, his eyes, hidden behind the panes of his glasses glowing with the light of the laptop, skimming over some numbers he’d been adjusting. Something inside James’s gut twisted as he watched Q yawn, rising to his feet and stretching. He grabbed his mug and turned, glancing in passing at James before jumping, leaning back against the wall next to him and putting his free hand over his heart.

“For fuck’s sake, James,” he groused, but there was a smile playing with his features, and he straightened nearly immediately. “There’s no need to act like a ghost in our home, you know. You could always do the good roommate thing and come out into the open. I won’t bite.”

James let himself smile wryly, aching beyond belief to reach forward and touch Q like he hadn’t done in several weeks now. Instead, he gripped his bicep tightly where he had his arms folded and shuttered his gaze. “There’s no certainty of that,” he heard himself reply. “You haven’t seen yourself while you’re asleep.”

Q scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I do _not_ bite while I’m asleep,” he said, walking to the kitchen, and as soon as he left James’s line of sight, he felt himself crumble, tiredness consuming him. He was already in his dressing gown, already cozy for the evening, but he knew that tonight, like many nights before, would be without sleep.

“Besides,” Q called from the kitchen, over the dull hiss of water running in the sink, “If you try to move me while I’m sleeping, you deserve whatever you get from my unconscious self.”

“Fair enough,” James replied, and he gazed down at the floor in front of him, his eyes glazing over. Behind him, his laptop filled his bedroom with a bright white glow, identification software running name after name and face after face. In James’s mind, a voice spoke over and over again, reminding him of his task, as if he could ever forget—and who was he to deny her this, her final task for him? He would work himself to the bone, into the grave, before he would deny her anything.

“James.”

James looked up, his eyes focusing on Q. He was a vision, all dressed up and ready for another night shift, his jacket hanging over his arm and his face drawn in open concern. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly, his tone so genuine that James almost swayed in his direction.

James gave him another smile, his starvation falling beneath his façade. “I’m alright,” he murmured quietly. “Just tired. Might be getting sick.”

Q gave him a swift appraisal before nodding. “You look it,” he said. “Drink plenty of water and get some rest tonight.” He started heading for the door, sliding his coat on and grabbing his keys. “And if anybody calls and tells you that you’re needed somewhere urgently, tell them your roommate said to stuff it.”

James laughed a little. “That ought to get through to them,” he said. “Be safe tonight, Q.”

Q pulled open the door, giving him a little smile. “You too, James,” he said. “Rest well. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Then, the door closed, and James was left with the thousands of faces streaming behind him.

He didn’t eat dinner. He didn’t drink water. He flipped through names, affiliations, associates, crimes, looking from country to country for any possible leads. It was the ritual he had been performing for a few weeks now, every night that he was back at the apartment.

Usually, he had little to no success, and when he greeted Q in the morning, it was without having gotten any sleep and with such disappointment swirling inside him that he ate very little.

Tonight, however, as his eyelids grew heavy and his body grew lax, his laptop beeped. He blinked rapidly, sitting himself up straight and looking at his laptop.

_Marco Sciarra. Mexico City._

James stared at the information, taking all of it in, before rising from his bed and throwing off his dressing gown as quickly as he could. Within half an hour, he was packed and prepped, a flight to Mexico booked.

The next morning, Q came home, exhausted and chilled. He hung his jacket, putting his keys by the door, and toed off his shoes by the door, heading toward the kitchen as quietly as he could. He glanced at James’s door and suddenly stopped walking. It was ajar. James never slept with the door open.

Q slowly padded toward the door, trying to be as quiet as possible, and pressed it open, peering inside. Then, he pushed the door open all the way, looking around the room.

The bed was perfectly made, everything in its proper place. The only things missing were James’s suitcase, laptop, and James Bond himself.

(~~~~)

James went to Mexico City, got what he wanted, and began to follow his new trail. The ring opened a new avenue he had possibly seen coming, but was nevertheless pleased to find anyhow. Anything further than what he had been following meant that he could continue his work, could fall into the same patterns over and over again in the name of patriotism, willing to sacrifice everything for queen and country.

A few days later, James was in Rome. It wasn’t the awful discovery in the middle of the shadow organization’s meeting that struck him as odd, or even the madness he had seen there—these things were normal in James’s life, and could not be avoided at times. It was the message he received in the middle of a car chase that struck him as odd.

All was as quiet as could be in a car chase as James tried to get in contact with Moneypenny, who wasn’t answering her phone, when suddenly a message appeared on his phone’s interface.

 _The Pale King is Mr. White,_ it read. James’s brows furrowed, but he nevertheless assessed the information. Of course, it made sense. The only lead he had from there was to track down White and ask him about the organization.

He left Rome by plane, and didn’t think much on the origin of the message until later.

(~~~~)

The second and third messages he received were long after he had left Austria but shortly after he had rescued Dr. Swann, White’s daughter, from Hinx and his men. The second message echoed what Swann herself had to say: “The organization is known as SPECTRE.”

The third, however, added some new information: _Members of SPECTRE include Mr. White, Sciarra, Le Chiffre, Dominic Greene, and Raoul Silva. The head is Franz Oberhauser._

“Do you know who it is?” she asked him as they were on their way to L’Americain. The plane ride to Morocco from the Alps was a long one, and James had spent a majority of it silent and looking at his phone. He had attempted to send a message or two back inquiring who was on the other end—he was unable to track the number back to a legitimate source—but he was met with complete silence.

“I haven’t a clue,” he replied, looking up at her. Her blonde hair glowed in the rising sunlight that streamed through the window of the airplane, and he studied the smooth skin of her cheeks and the brightness of her eyes. A deep ache like an echo of some prior sensation filled his chest with longing, and he looked away, trying his hardest to banish the vision of dark curls and a boyish smile.

“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else,” she said, and he looked up at her again. Her eyes clearly said that she would not be fooled by any masks he would try to put on, and he supposed he should have guessed as much, seeing as she was raised by someone from the same world as he was.

“There is nowhere else I’m needed,” he replied, and to his surprise, she scoffed at him.

“Now I know that can’t be true,” she said, and his curious look was promptly ignored. She stared out the plane window, and he turned his attention back to his phone, tired but unwilling to sleep, knowing that if he did, he would dream of things best left forgotten, if only for now.

(~~~~)

He fell asleep in L’Americain, dreaming of laughter and a warm blanket falling over his shoulders as he slept off his drunkenness, of a floppy mess of dark hair falling asleep on the couch and a gentle, melodic voice insisting that he drink water and go to sleep, and asking with total sincerity, _are you okay_?

James woke up hurting, angry, and still drunk enough to consider shooting a mouse in the middle of the floor. As it stood, that mouse ran straight into his next lead, so he decided rodents weren’t all bad, after all.

The coordinates in the next room led him to his next target. As he headed back into the other room to go back to sleep, coaxing Madeleine to do the same, he got the fourth message.

_Things not well in London. Be on your guard._

James regarded that for a moment, his thoughts flashing to Mallory, Tanner, and Moneypenny, before he returned to his chair and fell asleep. His dreams were no different than they were before, and when he awoke the next morning, it was as if he’d had no reprieve at all.

(~~~~)

Seeing London for the first time after having been away for a while always had the same effect on James. The streets called to him to wind through them like siren songs in the ocean, and he was unable to resist that call every time. This time, though, there seemed to be a new voice to join in the song, some new call beckoning him home.

He found the nearest safe house that was off the grid and settled himself and Madeleine in the darkness. He positioned himself to face the door, while putting her out of sight.

“If someone comes,” he began, but the look in her eyes told him she understood, and he fell silent.

A long moment of quiet passed, during which James listened to the traffic outside the window and tried not to imagine where Q was now. Part of him only wanted to go home and sleep, possibly calling Q and asking him to come back from work, if only to see his face, and maybe to quell the ache that had been slowly building in his gut since the night he realized— but the job was far from over. He forced himself to look at the streetlights outside, to count the cars going by, but he was constantly distracted, and the thread of his thoughts, however he tried to weave it, always led back to Q.

“Where is she?” Madeleine asked, and James looked at her, examining her expression closely—but there was no sign of ill intent, rather a dull kind of curiosity permeated with vague concern. His protective reaction deflated a little, and he sighed.

He and Dr. Swann had become close over their ordeal, though that had been expected. James had almost assumed it would all go as it usually did, but strangely enough, when the time came, they both had shied away from the idea, only willing to go through it as if it was a motion they had both expected to pass. But Dr. Swann was consumed by apathy, and her father’s death had shaken her more than she cared to admit, and James was constantly taunted by faces in his dreams and the singular voice in his head that told him what to do. _Find Marco Siarra. Kill him. And don’t miss the funeral._

In the end, the two had a bottle of champagne to each of them and had spoken all night, trying to avoid all things of import and failing miserably. Dr. Swann had come clean about her relationship with her father, and Bond had found himself talking about M in some similar capacity.

“It almost seems as if something is missing now, even though I’d sworn him off,” Madeleine said, looking blearily at James, and it wasn’t just the alcohol that made that worn look on her face. He felt that look to the depths of his soul, and he topped her off from his bottle. She only shot him a wry grin and returned the favor from hers.

They had ended up passing out at that table, and when they had awoken, the dynamic between them had shifted. Bond half expected her to rib him mercilessly about his drunken confessions, but she only commented on his status as an enabler, flashing him a joking smile.

James had never had a really loving sibling before, the only sibling he’d ever had being Franz, so this experience shocked him in that it existed at all, and also in that it comforted him so. He expected the feeling was mutual, because Madeleine had confided in him that she was frightened, and they clasped hands. They took their strength from one another then, and had ever since.

They had spoken about everything—their fears, their pasts—but not about Q.

Until now.

“James,” Madeleine said, and James looked up at her again, trying his hardest to make her see that he didn’t want to talk about it. To talk about it was to acknowledge it, and he would rather have avoided that.

But she was not to be deterred. “Where is she?” she asked again, and James once again stared out the window, a tic forming in his jaw. “Or he? They?”

James cast her a narrow-eyed glare, and she met it with one of her own. “We’re not dancing around it any longer, James,” she said, and he pinched his lips together, glaring out the window again. “If they’re here in London, you should speak to them.”

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he murmured, his tone clipped and harsh, but she was not deterred.

“If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you overcomplicate things when they could be simple and simplify things when they could use deeper thought,” she replied. “It’s an avoidance pattern.”

James didn’t say anything, not rising to the bait. Madeleine huffed, crossing her arms, and James ignored the motion in favor of counting headlights again.

All was quiet for a long moment, and then, she spoke again. “You haven’t even asked them, have you?” she asked quietly. “You haven’t, for one second, even _considered_ that they could love you back.”

“They can’t,” he replied, closing his eyes and looking down, the familiar ache lancing through him with unusual fervor. “They shouldn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter what they should and shouldn’t do,” Madeleine replied evenly. “Have you ever known love to be rational? Has anyone?”

James hated that word. He gritted his teeth, standing up straight. “How the hell do you know it’s love, anyway?” James snapped, looking at her angrily. “What if it’s lust, hmm? How do you know it’s not that all I want to do is fuck him and leave him?”

His heart broke, and the words tasted bitter leaving his mouth.

“That’s how,” Madeleine replied.

James said nothing. Instead, his brows furrowed, and he looked back out the window, trying to get himself under control. How he got so lost, he couldn’t tell, but there was hardly a chance of recovering from this.

“I’m just trying to say,” Madeleine continued quietly, “you’ve been through a lot. Maybe you should let yourself hope for once, ignoring what instinct tells you.”

James chuckled incredulously. “Are you telling me you think I deserve love?” he asked, disbelief running rampant in his tone.

“Perhaps,” Madeleine replied evenly. “But I’m also telling you to think of it from another perspective. What if he already loves you? How could you convince him to change his mind?”

“He doesn’t,” James said immediately, but the memory of warm hands pulling a blanket over him that drunken night resurfaced. “He shouldn’t. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”

“It’s not about what you wish,” she said. “It’s about what exists now. It’s a possibility. It’s a chance. Will you let that go without reaching out for it?”

James opened his mouth to reply, but his phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket, pulling open the message.

_M, Moneypenny, Tanner, and Guest headed to safe house. Please meet there for briefing._

His brows furrowed. Guest? Footsteps clanged on the stairs, and James slid the phone back in his pocket, putting his hand around the Walther stashed in his other pocket, pulling back the hammer. Madeleine ducked a little, staying out of view of the windows.

Shadows appeared over the door, and James felt himself slide back into a cool calm. The lock jingled, and then the door unlocked, and James was face to face with Mallory.

Mallory told Moneypenny, Tanner, and someone else hiding slightly behind them to stay outside, heading to the table and prepping some weaponry. He and James traded information and plans, and all seemed to be going as planned, James allowing himself to absorb the information as he readied a weapon with relative ease, until—

“Wait,” James said, looking up at Mallory, who had stopped loading a magazine to look at James. “Did you say Q?”

“I did,” Mallory said, and his gaze was keen. James nodded, looking back down at his gun and working at it, the calm look on his face belying the sudden turmoil racing through him. Mallory was quiet for another moment before continuing his work, once again talking about their plans.

And then he and James were leaving the safe house. Madeleine came up very close behind him and squeezed his hand as they headed down the stairs, where Moneypenny, Tanner, and the Guest were waiting. Even as he was descending the stairs, James could recognize the coat, the dark curls blending in with the dark pavement and the glasses reflecting the streetlights.

When James and Madeleine got to the group, Moneypenny extended a grim smile his way, and Tanner’s grin was no less serious, but somehow more light hearted. Q, however, had a much more hesitant smile, and the glimmer in his eyes slowly faded as James’s expression didn’t change.

“Q,” he began, and the others slowly began gravitating away from them, heading toward the cars and finishing a few last-minute preparations. Madeleine remained for a few extra moments, squeezing his hand again before letting go, heading toward the others. James saw Q’s eyes watch their hands slide away from one another, and when he looked back up into James’s eyes, James thought he could see something there.

“Q,” James repeated, but Q began to speak.

“I know this isn’t what you wanted,” he said, “but M was in need of someone to get past C’s security protocols and shut down Nine Eyes, and there was no one he knew more qualified than myself.” James stepped a little closer to him, and Q wavered, but stayed upright. His laptop was pressed to his chest, and James could see he was still in his work uniform. “I understand if you’re angry, James—”

“This was not supposed to happen,” James said. “This is exactly what I was trying to prevent. You could get yourself killed tonight, Q.”

Q scoffed. “I think I’ve already taught you I can handle myself, James,” he replied, but James took another step toward him, this one much faster, and Q actually _flinched_ , rooting James to the spot.

Nevertheless, James spoke again, his tone louder and a little angrier. “What, by taking out a few thugs in the safety of your apartment? That’s _nothing,_ Q; that’s a _blip_ on the radar compared to this. Do you realize what you’re getting involved in? If you back out now, you can leave with a clean record and with your life—”

To his surprise, Q’s expression morphed almost immediately into one of fury, and he stepped into James’s space, glaring at him with such intensity that James was almost taken aback by it. Never had he seen Q so incensed.

“You don’t _know_ what I’ve done,” Q snarled at him. There was a brief pause, and then he said, “You don’t _know_ what it’s been like, waiting these past few weeks for you to come home, not knowing where you were or what you were doing, whether you were still _alive_ —I had to do _something_ —”

Here, he cut himself off, pinching the bridge of his nose with the hand not holding his laptop to his chest. When he looked at James again, it was with a hard, determined look that James didn’t like at all.

“I’m not doing this with you right now,” Q said. “I’m going in the car with Tanner and Moneypenny, and I’m working at C’s system. We only have about half an hour to shut it down, and I need to get to work.”

He made to move past James, but James stepped in his way, glaring murder at him. “No, you’re not,” he said, but Q shouldered past him.

“Yell at me once this is over,” Q replied angrily as he walked by. “For now, do your bloody job.”

“ _Q_ —” James yelled after him, but he was ignored, left to watch Q move to Moneypenny and Tanner, exchanging a few words with them before getting into the SUV with them.

Madeleine approached him, and this time, it was he who reached for her hand, squeezing it. She squeezed in response, letting out a sigh.

“I can’t do this,” she said, and James looked at her. The phantom of past pains was alive in her eyes, and he remembered what she had said to him in the train car. _I hate guns._ He had learned since that it wasn’t just guns she hated, but everything they were associated with.

“I’ll look you up after this is over,” James said, and she turned and gave him a wry smile that bespoke her doubt.

“Sure,” she replied nevertheless, and with one last mutual squeeze, they dropped their linked hands and she headed down the road. James got into the SUV with Mallory, trying to ignore the glow of a laptop in the SUV behind them. They drove in silence.

And then they were wrecked by a black truck, and all hell broke loose.

(~~~~)

It was hard to believe that it was only a half-hour later, but it was. Oberhauser—still going by Blofeld, but James knew who he really was—was crawling away from the downed helicopter, a wounded bird having plummeted from the nest. The cuckoo bird had struck again, he thought, and he ignored the strain in his heart in favor of dismantling the gun in front of Blofeld’s eyes.

He did not deserve death, and James could not see himself costing another person their life.

James looked up and to his right, seeing Madeleine standing there, something shining in her eyes. He approached her, holding out his hand, and she took it, the two of them walking away together, leaving all of it behind.

They walked to the nearest hotel, and James checked her in. She remained mostly silent next to him, occasionally swinging their joined hands and resting her head against his shoulder.

Finally, though, they walked to her door, and she looked at him for a long moment before smiling at him softly and tiredly. “Go home, James,” she said, and he could feel her meaning down to his bones. He nodded, kissing her forehead before ushering her through her door.

“You have my number,” he said, and she laughed a little.

“I do, I do,” she said. “I’ll call if I need anything. And when I say ‘I’ll call,’ I really mean I’ll call Moneypenny. You need to get home, James. You’re needed there.”

James blinked, looking up at her, but he only caught the tail end of her smile before the door shut in front of him.

With nothing else to do, James found himself reverting slowly back into the way he felt when he had completed a mission. All the adrenaline drained from him, and all he wanted was to sleep off his exhaustion. As it stood, there was one last thing that needed doing: one last mission that needed undertaking.

Then, he could take his sleep.

(~~~~)

He spent the walk home coming up with things to say, but as soon as he came to the door, they all disappeared. Instead, what was left was a yawning gulf between himself and understanding, and no matter how he tried to bridge it, he grew no closer to his goal. The only way he possibly could, he realized, was by facing what had lain in wait for him.

So he opened the door and stepped inside.

The apartment looked normal—not a thing out of place, even down to Q’s laptop on the coffee table. He dropped his keys in the bowl by the door, locking the door and toeing off his shoes.

One of the cabinets slammed shut in the kitchen, and suddenly Q bolted out of the doorway, freezing and looking at him with a frantic expression on his face. As James catalogued every little change in him—the color high on his cheeks, the slightly disheveled set of his clothes, the small tremor in his hands—Q’s eyes made a thorough examination of James, as if memorizing every mark, every bruise, every scar. The scrutiny was at once too much and not enough, but just before it could spark anything, Q bit his lower lip and looked at the floor.

“I suppose we should talk,” he murmured at length, and James nodded stiffly, moving to a chair and settling down. Q, as was his custom, took the couch, his hands fidgeting in front of him and his eyes blinking rapidly.

“Are you alright?” James asked, his voice a little raw from his extended silence, and Q looked at him for a second before looking away and nodding.

“Yes, of course,” he murmured quickly. “Just a little jittery is all.”

“Do you need a tea?” James asked, and Q looked at him again, this time holding his gaze with a strange expression.

“No, I’ve already had one, thank you,” Q replied. “James—”

“When you said, ‘you don’t know what I’ve done,’” James began, and Q watched him with widened eyes. James leaned over, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands lacing tranquilly in front of him. “What did you mean?”

Q looked at him for a long moment before letting his head fall, his teeth closing over his lower lip again. “I just meant that… When you first left, I was worried that you hadn’t said anything, but I had assumed you’d been sent off on assignment and would get to me when you could. That’s how it’d happened in the past, so why not now? Well,” Q said, running a hand through his hair quickly, leaving it messier than it was previously, “when you didn’t return, or even leave word, I grew worried. So I started looking through the last files you had accessed on your laptop through the connection I had established when I first moved in, and from there, I started tracking down information.”

Understanding slowly dawned in James’s expression, and he looked at Q, who stared back at him as if awaiting the axe. “It was you,” he said, but even as it came out, he knew he should have guessed it sooner. Who else had that kind of power and that kind of access, yet only used it to help a rogue agent?

“Yes,” Q replied hesitantly. “I used an encrypted line to keep Max from tracking down my files to the best of my ability, and I fed you what I could. I played cat and mouse with him often, trying to dodge his attempts on my connection. At one point he got close to finding out where I was, but I kept him at bay.”

James tensed slightly at that, murderous thoughts boiling over his previous tranquility as he stared at the carpet in front of him, but Q ploughed on. “I was more surprised when Mallory found me first. He must have either tracked down what I was doing the old-fashioned way or had hazarded a guess, but either way, he recruited me to stop Nine Eyes. I had to say yes, James,” he said, his gaze imploring James to understand. “You had disappeared, and I had no idea where you were, only that you were in irregular amounts of danger. That was confirmed when Mallory came looking for me, a civilian, to help him out. If there was anything more I could have done, trust me in that I would have gladly done it if it meant helping you out.”

“But why help me?” James asked, and he looked up at Q. At Q’s confused expression, he continued. “You just as easily could have warned Mallory, kept him updated, worked with Moneypenny and Tanner. Why risk everything to go out of your way to help me?”

Q looked at him long and evenly for a moment, before saying, “if you don’t know by now, James, then you’re a bloody fool.”

“Know what?” he asked quietly.

The apartment fell into a complete silence that was almost deafening. Q’s hands gripped the couch cushions harshly, and he bit his lip, looking to James’s eyes for a moment before lunging forward, slowing at the last second and capturing James’s lips in a tender kiss.

At once, everything in James cried surrender, and he succumbed to it, pressing a hand gently to Q’s throat, the other hand coming to rest on his hip. They kissed gently for a few moments before he bodily dragged Q across the gap between the couch and the chair and settled him into his lap. Q moaned gently, but went with few qualms, his hands scrabbling for purchase on James’s shoulders, and they kissed for a few long moments with Q straddling James’s lap before they parted. Q’s eyes opened blearily, and James stroked his thumb across the stubble at his jawline, watching as a smile bloomed across his features.

“We should talk about this,” Q said, but even as he spoke, his hands wandered across James’s chest, running across the smooth expanse of his suit and jacket in a manner that was incredibly distracting.

“We should,” James hummed, leaning forward and tasting Q’s neck, biting gently and eliciting a hiss and a gentle sigh. James’s heart was thrumming steadily in his chest, but there was a riot in his head, and he fought long and hard with himself before he finally came out and said it, remembering what Madeleine had said to him.

“I love you, and I want to make love to you,” he said against Q’s skin, feeling angry with himself, excited, relieved, and frightened all at once. Nevertheless, he kissed up the column of Q’s throat and murmured in the hollow just below his ear, “That’s all I have to talk about.”

Q’s hands slid up from his chest to cup his jaw on either side, and he slowly pulled James away from where he had been hiding in Q’s neck, gazing at him with wide, curious eyes and a near-blank expression on his face that was just barely tinged with a hint of surprise. James’s cautious heart berated him for even speaking, and he almost made a move to leave, to go anywhere but there, to fulfill his desire to _run_ and escape further heartbreak—

And then Q smiled brightly and leaned in for another kiss, this one deeper and more passionate than the last. It stole James’s breath, and he grasped Q by his hips and pulled him closer, rejoicing in the small sound he made through his nose.

“I love you too,” Q whispered reverently against his lips, and they slowly started rocking against one another, causing shivers to race up their spines and a wild heat to spread over their skin. “I love you so much.”

They established a rhythm, one that slowly grew in pace and intensity until their entire worlds shattered, at first two separate things that slowly melded to become one, their hearts racing in their chests and their breaths mingling between them. Something inside James shattered at the impossibility of it all, and was reformed immediately by Q’s logical proof delivered by his hands, his lips, by the sounds he made and the sighs he exhaled. They put aside everything except what secrets they had been hiding from one another for a long time, and despite the chaos of the night they found solace in this destruction.

James’s world was destroyed and rebuilt anew, and as the night wore on, he realized that he didn’t mind at all.

(~~~~)

When he woke up in his bed, he was almost convinced it was all a dream.

Then the head of dark hair lying against his chest burrowed closer to him, the warm body entangling further with his, and he couldn’t stop the blooming warmth in his chest. He ran a hand through that hair, relishing in the fact that he could.

It would take a while to get used to yet, he was sure of it, but for now, the idea of having Q in his life coalesced peacefully with his mind, and that, surely, was a good sign. The events of last night still needed going over, certainly, and in many different capacities, no less, but the good parts sat beautifully next to the revelation that James had had last night, which was mimicked by the conclusion he had come to upon waking: perhaps all was over. Perhaps, as Madeleine would no doubt tell him, it was time to move on.

Q shuffled, letting out a heavy sigh that warmed the skin of James’s chest before lifting his head up, his bleary eyes blinking out sleep and his hand coming up to stifle a yawn. James watched him, mesmerized, as he took stock of his surroundings before looking at James and smiling.

“Good morning,” he said, and James ran a thumb across his cheek, delighting in the way Q nuzzled into the palm of his hand. “We still have to talk,” he mumbled, blindly pressing kisses to the skin of James’s hand.

Maybe moving on was a good idea. Maybe things would be alright if he did.

“We certainly do, Q,” he replied, his voice low from his sleep, and Q’s smile widened.

He looked over to the clock, however, and his smile dropped. “It’s only nine,” he groused, lowering himself back into James’s chest and snuggling him gently. “Let’s go back to bed first and _then_ wake up and talk about things.”

James laughed a little, pulling Q closer and dropping a kiss to the crown of his head. “Deal,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “But only if Holmes can join us for breakfast.”

Q snorted into James’s chest. “Fine, fine,” he replied. “If you insist, we’ll invite the robot to breakfast. Happy?”

James felt more things than words could possibly express.

“Absolutely,” is what he chose to say anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> So, due to the nature of the real world VS the Craig films!world, the events of Spectre may happen at a different time in reference to the events of Skyfall in this universe than the actual movieverse. I’m so sorry if anything’s confusing, and please don’t be afraid to ask me to clarify something in the writing if it in any way contributes to that confusion.
> 
> Also, Q and Bond WILL be having that talk, don't you worry.
> 
> Come visit me on [tumblr!](http://exacteyewriting.tumblr.com)


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